Pig Farming From Scratch: A Growing Success Story

At the time she was awarded a piggery by the Gauteng Department of Agriculture and Rural Development, Betty Nyambi knew little or nothing about pig farming. But she refused to let that stop her, and through hard work and training she has become a competent pig farmer. Today, she is aiming at her next goal: gaining quality assurance certification. Siyanda Sishuba reports.

- Siyanda Sishuba

When Betty Nyambi of Sincobile Trading and Agriculture was growing up in Komatipoort, Mpumalanga, she had her heart set on becoming a nurse. Sadly, she was never able to pursue this career, but farming has given her the opportunity to live out her passion for caregiving in a surprising way.

“My grades didn’t qualify me to study nursing. So I decided to study rural development and extension at Tshwane University of Technology,” she recalls.

The course included livestock and crop production, and Nyambi qualified in 2003.

The following year, she did an internship as a student technician with the Gauteng Department of Agriculture and Rural Development (GDARD), hoping to become an extension officer. This, too, unfortunately, did not work out, but she did manage to find a job as a farm worker at Winterveld Citrus farm outside Pretoria.

“I worked there until the end of 2010, when an opportunity came up to work at Mphiwe crop farm in Bronkhorstspruit,” she says.

FARMING FOR HERSELF

Here, Nyambi soon felt inspired to become a farmer, so she started applying for land through the Department of Rural Development and Land Reform. Finally, in 2014, she received a 173ha farm near Bronkhorstspruit.

“To my surprise, it had piggery infrastructure. I knew nothing about rearing pigs but because I was eager to farm, I grabbed the chance with both hands,” she recalls.

There are four pig houses on the farm. One, with a 180- sow capacity, is used as a gestation house. Another, a 46-pen facility, is the farrowing house. The other two houses are used to keep weaners and growers and have respective capacities of 240 and 300.